BALLET: DANES PRESENT TETLEY'S NEW 'FIREBIRD'

By ANNA KISSELGOFF

Published: June 19, 1982

Surprise. The Royal Danish Ballet has scored a hit with, of all things, a premiere by an American choreographer. On Thursday night at the Metropolitan Opera House, the company from Copenhagen presented its first mixed bill, made up of Glen Tetley's new, unorthodox ''The Firebird''; its own fascinating and comic 1786 heirloom, ''The Whims of Cupid and the Balletmaster,'' and the company's New York debut in Alvin Ailey's modern-dance work ''Memoria.''

It was the New York premiere of the ''Firebird'' that swept the audience into a wave of enthusiasm. And with such an exceedingly well-danced performance and immense theatricality manipulated here by Mr. Tetley and the designer, John F. Macfarlane, this ''Firebird'' is highly seductive. One should not be taken in by it, but one can very well enjoy it.

It is a work that presents a picture of the Royal Danish Ballet that differs from its image as a treasure house of 19th-century ballets by the great August Bournonville. And yet as a major cast change showed in Bournonville's ''The Kermesse at Bruges'' Wednesday afternoon, the Royal Danes know how to make this Romantic repertory speak with modern vitality to our own times. Ib Jeppesen and Benedikte Paaske were not as strong technically as the first-night leads, but they projected much more persuasively, and Frank Andersen's comic portrayal as Gert made its every point brilliantly.

It is not true, incidentally, that there are no stars. In this ''Firebird,'' Arne Villumsen emerges as a male dancer of international rank. Making an instant impression in 1976 with the entire company, he has been seen since then several times in Bournonville excerpts with a small touring ensemble, and he was prominent in the 1979 Bournonville Centenary Festival in Copenhagen that swept scores of dance critics into the present Bournonville fever.

Over the years, Mr. Villumsen has become an increasingly noble classical dancer - totally in the Danish tradition. In ''Firebird,'' he is cast in a relatively minor role that he makes major - through the perfection of his every movement and stance, as well as an absorbing dramatic commitment. In the end, this ''Firebird'' was a personal triumph for Mr. Villumsen and Linda Hindberg, in the title role.

It goes without saying, if one is familiar with Mr. Tetley's work, that this title role has little to do with the original. Mr. Tetley's updated scenario jettisons the synthetic Russian fairy-tale plot of the 1910 Fokine-Stravinsky ''Firebird'' and replaces it with a Victorian soap opera about repression.

The imagery, through the costumes, is of a puritanical 19thcentury bourgeois household. Lars Damsgaard, who looks nicely convincing rather than ridiculous in his frock coat, is a nasty father-figure hovering over Miss Hindberg, who sheds her bustle for a shiny reddish unitard. Six Victorian furies whirl menacingly in and out as a modern-dance chorus, and Mogens Boesen, Bjarne Hecht and Thomas Johansen lead an ambiguous shiny-blue male ensemble that mates eventually with ''young maidens'' in short dresses.

Mr. Villumsen is the casually dressed lover through whom Miss Hindberg finds love and liberation. The wedding scene is stunning, with Miss Hindberg emerging in her Lady Diana wedding gown among the gliding women, now in white rather than black after good's triumph over evil.

There are, of course, modern-dress parallels here with the original scenario. Mr. Tetley also uses the full Stravinsky score, rather than a suite, even if the characters are not always matched with their musical leitmotifs. The choreography is for the most part in Mr. Tetley's sleek style, which the Danes capture very well. Mr. Macfarlane's mirrors on two sides and backcloths of blots with emotional meanings, are clinical and compatible with Mr. Tetley's own wavelength. With its dated Freudian imagery, this is a ballet that harks back to the 1940's. In ''Letter to the World,'' Martha Graham thought up the memorable figure of the Puritan ancestress who thwarts the heroine's search for love. Once a member of the Graham company, Mr. Tetley has now seen this ancestress six-fold.

The ancestor of all extant ballets today is ''The Whims of Cupid and of the Balletmaster,'' to give the more correct title. Said to have been passed along in the company since Vincenzo Galeotti choreographed it in 1786, it is a little, delightful divertissement -part classical dancing, part character-dance and part mime. Cupid, assuredly played by the young James Vinding, mixes up lovers of differing nationalities.

If the blackface section recalls a sensibility no longer valid, the satire on the other couples is delicious. Ulla Skow and Palle Jacobsen stole the show as the stiff Quakers, and the 18th-century marquis and marquise were brilliantly mimed by Lillian Jensen and Niels Bjorn Larsen.

No need to get excited about, incidentally, a European ballet company massacring an American modern-dance work. ''Memoria'' is not Mr. Ailey's best work, but the Danes, who have had some Martha Graham technique, look less balletic than American companies that try modern-dance pieces.

It is true that they make the dancing more formal than emotional. But then this was Mr. Ailey's tribute to his late friend the choreographer Joyce Trisler, and the Danes cannot possibly feel as emotionally involved here as the Ailey troupe. Nonetheless, Miss Hindberg was stunning in her own pure-dance way. The Cast THE FIREBIRD, music, Igor Stravinsky; chore- ography, Glen Tetley; scenery and costumes, John F. Macfarlane; lighting, John B. Read. Presented by the Royal Danish Ballet at the Metropolitan Opera House. WITH: Lars Damsgaard, Linda Hindberg, Arne Villumsen and members of the company.